


Humanoids

by Inkwasher (inkstainedwretch)



Series: Humanoids [1]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: AU - Synthetic Humanity, Ensemble Cast, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-09
Updated: 2014-10-09
Packaged: 2018-02-20 13:45:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2431040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkstainedwretch/pseuds/Inkwasher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for <a href="https://masseffectkink.livejournal.com/8276.html?thread=40012628#t40012628">a prompt on the MEKM</a> that basically amounted to "what if humanity had developed sentient AI, and then something happened so all the organics died out before humanity discovered the mass relays".  This story spans the events of Mass Effect 1.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Humanoids

Shepard rolled over and gave her movement processes a couple of minutes to wake up. It took a lot longer than it should have for her optics to adjust to the low lighting of the med bay. Her right arm wouldn’t move, which meant she’d gotten a cable detached. Great. That had been a rough shutdown as it was, and the data the beacon had flooded her with still didn’t make any sense. She sat up to see Kaidan sitting on the bed next to hers. He looked mostly intact, but Shepard could see what looked like an internal burn on his neck, right next to his eezo amp. She’d probably ask him later for a copy of what happened after her mainframe shut down, but not now.

“You alright, commander?”

“I’ve been better,” she went ahead and ran a defragmentation cycle. Maybe it would help clear up her thoughts. “You?”

“I’ll be alright.”

A moment’s pause, and then Shepard asked the question she almost didn’t want answered.

“What about Jenkins? Was it a system crash, or…?”

“I’m afraid not, commander,” Dr. Chakwas walked over with a spot repair kit and made a small incision in Shepard’s shoulder. The smell of hot silicone drifted up to Shepard’s nose as the doctor replaced the broken connectors and reattached the nervous cable beneath layers of synthetic muscle. Her movements were careful, but stilted. “They burned him out. His motherboard is completely scorched.”  

“ _Fuck_ ,” Shepard whispered. “Didn’t even take them ten seconds. We’re gonna have to turn the network link off every time we get near the geth.”

“Seems like it, yeah,” Kaidan turned his head to give Dr. Chakwas better access to his amplifier. Shepard grimaced when she saw the scorch marks on the inside of his skin. It didn’t help knowing he probably got them getting her back to the Normandy in one piece. “Unbelievable. A network-transmitted overload that goes straight for the motherboard. It’s almost like…”

Shepard ran a hand over her shoulder and felt the tingling movement of her repair program as it closed the incision. She had a feeling she knew what Kaidan was talking about, but she was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

“Almost like what?”

“Almost like the organic plague, ma’am.”

There was a long pause after that. Dr. Chakwas didn’t say a word. The only sound was the dull hum of Kaidan’s amp connections being disconnected and replaced.

After nearly a whole minute, Shepard pushed herself off the exam table and left without responding. This was _nothing_ like the organic plague, but she wasn’t going to be the one to explain why. Not today.

\--

Shepard’s Spectre designation was done in ambassador Udina’s office, quietly and quickly. Getting a new pistol from the Spectre Requisitions office resulted in a conversation that could’ve gone viral on the extranet, had Shepard been bitter enough to upload it. She couldn’t _believe_ they’d taken Anderson off the Normandy. He was the one who’d gotten her to enlist in the first place, and god damn it, he deserved better than that. She couldn’t argue now, though. Even once her access codes went through and Shepard was given command of the Normandy, she didn’t feel any different.

When they got back onboard the Normandy, Shepard hooked herself up to a charging port in the cargo hold and busied herself with requisitions, paying more attention to the back-and-forth math of weapon upgrades and armor specifications than she really needed to. After a few minutes, Ashley pinged her over the ship’s network, and she opened up a channel.

>>That was bullshit, ma’am.

>Tell me how you really feel, Williams.

>>I mean it! Spectre designation is a _huge_ deal, even when they do the group ceremony for the turian training program! If you were any other race, they would’ve had a full ceremony at the Tower, but no. They want you to get rid of their geth problem, but they don’t want to acknowledge that they need your help.

>I think the Council was more worried about what might happen if they tried to do an actual ceremony.

>>The volus would’ve thrown a fit?

> _Everyone_ would’ve thrown a fit. You know why organics started designing our bodies with realistic skin tones and super-articulated facial muscles? Too many patients were refusing treatment from synthetic nurses. Thousands of them just flat-out died of stubbornness. They’re scared of us, Ash. If word got out that the Council was about to designate a human Spectre, people would’ve shown up with arc projectors.

>>Which is bullshit.

>Never said I disagreed with you.

\--

The day Garrus, Wrex, and Tali joined her crew felt like a whirlwind to Shepard. Even though human ships were maintained with standard accommodations for up to half the active crew to consist of organics, and this could be modified to a whole crew if necessary, organics were usually reluctant to take up a position on a human ship. And now she had three, from three completely different species.

As much as she appreciated them, she wasn’t completely sure she was ready for this.

She honestly didn’t expect any of them to ping her directly, at least not until they’d been onboard for at least a week. However, when she got a ping from Tali just a couple of hours after they left the Citadel, she couldn’t honestly say she was surprised. Tali seemed perfectly at home amid all of the Normandy’s tech; Shepard already knew she’d miss having her onboard once her pilgrimage was done.

>>Commander?

>Yes, Tali?

>>Sorry, I’m still not completely sure how this works. Does this go to your terminal?

>Actually, it goes straight to me.

>>Wow. …that makes sense.

>It’s very convenient. Was there something you needed?

>>Actually, there was something I wanted to tell you, but I can’t quite figure out how to say it over this connection.

>I can come down there, if you’d rather talk in person.

>>That might be best, yes. Thank you, Shepard.

Shepard disconnected. If Tali had something important to say, it was probably better to say it in person. Organics weren’t able to read anything but plain text from the interface program humans had gotten used to, and no matter which species you were talking to, physical expression and movement meant a whole lot more to organics than text. So, down the elevator she went.

The drive core was whirring away as always, and sure enough, it still washed out her color perception for a good few seconds until her system could compensate. She wondered sometimes if organics had that problem, too. Maybe she just needed to see Dr. Chakwas again, maybe get a set of replacement sensors. She fiddled with her optic software until she could see Tali’s eyes behind her face shield, instead of just a huge glare.

“Hello Shepard,” Tali turned slowly to face her.

“How are you doing?”

“I’ll be fine. I just…oh, keelah.” Tali shook her head slowly. “I think I might owe you an apology, Shepard.”

“An apology?”  That wasn’t the _last_ thing she ever expected Tali to say, but it was pretty far down the list. “For what?”

“When I agreed to join you, I didn’t actually know if I would be able to stay on the Normandy for very long. I’m used to ship life, since I grew up on the flotilla, but I didn’t know if I would really be able to live here, because…well, because you’re synthetics.”

“I can see where you might be concerned,” Shepard transferred the credits she now owed Joker over to his account; she’d been sure Wrex would be the first to say something. “Most people don’t know what being on a human vessel is like, because we don’t have many organics serving with us.”

“There isn’t much information out there,” Tali seemed to relax, thankfully. “The reports from long-term missions are mostly written by asari, and they don’t cover things like dextro rations or whether you can safely repair your suit.”

“Do you have everything you need?”

“I’ll be just fine,” she nodded. “Human ships aren’t as sterile as quarian liveships, but they’re very close. I’m actually safer here than I would be on a turian or asari ship, at least where infection is concerned.”

“That’s good to hear,” Shepard’s mind extrapolated the potential benefits of cooperation between humans and quarians, and she quite liked the idea. She halted the thought process before it distracted her too much; it made sense that she would be drawn to a race of organics who were constantly at risk for potentially life-threatening illness. Too much sense, actually. “What do you think of the Normandy so far?”

“It’s _incredible_. I’ve never seen a ship with this much power, and the stealth system…keelah, if only the quarians had invented something like that.” Tali paused for a moment, then shook her head. “It’s taking some getting used to, though. It’s so quiet, I’m finding it a bit harder to sleep. I’ve been playing recordings of quarian engine noises inside my helmet.”

“You’re not used to sleeping in a quiet environment?”

“The liveships aren’t very quiet,” Tali chuckled, “but I’m getting used to it, here. The more I see of the Normandy, the more I feel like I made the right decision in joining you.”

“Glad to hear it, Tali.” Shepard smiled.

Behind the deep purple glass of her helmet, Tali’s eyes brightened just a little.

\--

She took them to Therum first; that beacon’s data wasdownright _intrusive_. Her sleep cycles kept getting interrupted by the images and noise playing back in her head, but the second she tried to display it on one of the ship’s screens, the system declared it incompatible. She was going to burn out, at this rate. Incomplete sleep cycles meant her CPUs never got to completely cool down, and that was dangerous.

Liara was fascinating, and not just because she was gorgeous. In addition to one of the quickest organic minds Shepard had ever encountered, she possessed a sort of innocence, an unassuming curiosity that was strangely refreshing.

Still, Shepard never once anticipated that Liara would ask to meld with her. In humanity’s very short history in the galactic community, an asari taking a human bondmate was nearly unheard of. In the frantic extranet search Shepard ran while pretending to deliberate the decision, she could find no evidence of a successful meld actually occurring between the two species. Sure, the more creative porn studios made it _look_ like a meld was happening, but looking further into the production methods showed the asari was actually melding with someone else off-camera. That had to be disorienting.

She ran an extrapolation of possible outcomes from agreeing, and then from declining. There was only one outcome if she declined, she concluded, and that was to remain ignorant and confused with the beacon’s images rampaging through her thoughts.

“If you think it would be safe, we might as well try.”

“ _What?!_ ” Ashley sat straight up in her chair. “Can you even _do_ that? I mean, it’s not that I don’t trust you, Dr. T’soni, but we’re synthetics. There’s no telling what could happen, if it even worked.”

“If you were able to receive anything at all from the Prothean beacon, it means the possibility exists,” Liara hadn’t so much as looked away from Shepard. She was determined, if nothing else. Shepard was never going to forgive herself if this hurt her.

“Alright,” she nodded. To be safe, she turned off a couple of remote access protection programs and let down her firewall. It was a risk, but she had the feeling this was more dangerous for Liara than it was for her. After all, synthetic neurons were much more easily repaired than organic.

_Embrace eternity!_

The words weren’t picked up by her auditory sensors, but by the central processes of her mind. All at once, she felt her system flooded with new information– the unshakable sense that there was _someone else_ in her body, another presence woven into her very code that interfaced so directly, so completely with her own, not a single part of her knew what to do with it. It didn’t register as wrong, necessarily, but it felt _alien_. Here was a strange new interface, a set of receptors connected to her own that ran on programming that made no sense to her. She could feel the image and sound of the beacon being analyzed by this presence, this _other_ , but she felt it as directly as though she were seeing it all again for the first time.

A sharp drop, the otherness abruptly gone, and then a good few seconds before Shepard realized she was still on the Normandy, still standing in the comm room, still in plain view of the whole rest of her crew. Liara stumbled back a step, and Shepard was reaching out to steady her before she could consciously register the action.

“Are you okay?” She assessed Liara’s pulse, her respiration, even the movement of her eyes, reverting to her most basic programming—searching for signs of life. Liara was alive, certainly, but Shepard couldn’t tell if she was seriously hurt or merely stunned. Shepard herself felt fine, at least where her physical body was concerned. As for her software…well, it was going to take some time to figure that one out.

“I…I believe so,” Liara held onto Shepard’s arm to steady herself. Her gaze was unfocused, but she was smiling. “ _Amazing_. The message is distorted and incomplete, but I never thought… Shepard, this could impact all of galactic life, if Prothean messages can be transmitted successfully to a synthetic consciousness—”

“Um, not to interrupt,” Tali shifted in her seat nervously, “but am I the only one who just saw an asari meld with a human? And it _worked_?”

“It definitely worked,” Liara nodded. A sort of manic excitement sparked in her eyes. “Goddess, this could change the entire galaxy’s perception of synthetic life. It could mean that the Protheans may not have been an entirely organic species. It could— _ah_ ” She clutched at the side of her head and grimaced. Shepard panicked, alerting Dr. Chakwas to prepare for an organic patient.

“We should get you to the med bay, just to be safe.”

“I don’t think that will be necessary. The joining on its own is exhausting. I will be alright after a short—” She brought a hand to her temple again, hissing softly. “Perhaps you’re right.”

\--

Shepard went down to sickbay after the meeting was dismissed. Everyone present had been shaken up by what had just happened, and by the time Shepard had left the room, the whole crew was working through the fact that humans could, apparently, successfully meld neural systems with asari. This was big. The next time they docked at a port with a comm hub strong enough, word would most likely get back to the citadel, and then it was a matter of seconds before it hit Earth. Shepard didn’t really know what to make of it. She had issued a tentative order that the information be classified for the time being, but she wasn’t sure how much good that would do.

Dr. Chakwas had the organic medicine cabinet open and was rearranging the supply bins when Shepard arrived. She allowed Shepard access to the most recent information added to Liara’s medical record, but kept most of it under a medical privacy lock. Liara, who was now resting in the room behind the med bay, would be fine with some rest and a moderate anti-inflammatory drug.

“Unbelievable.” Shepard took a seat next to the cabinets.

“It certainly changes things,” Dr. Chakwas removed a few units of medi-gel to replace the ones Garrus and Tali had used up on Therum. “Dr. T’Soni is extremely fortunate. She came out of a meld with a synthetic needing less treatment than a quarian with a faulty seal. The strangest part is, she would likely need less intervention if she tried it again. Asari have historically experienced a neural sensitivity reaction when melding with a new species for the first time. It’s rather exacerbated in this case, but there’s no evidence of any serious damage.”

“Makes you wonder why nobody’s tried it before.”

“Probably because of what happened with the geth. Long before the Morning War, stories circulated about asari who attempted to meld with them.”

“With the _geth_?” Shepard winged an eyebrow at her. “What happened?”

“For most of them, nothing happened at all. There simply wasn’t the capacity for a connection. There was one notable exception, but the raw feedback from the geth intelligence left her hospitalized for months.” She sighed softly. “Poor thing.”

“Then how did T’Soni come out of it intact? Human intelligence is a few orders of magnitude ahead of the geth, or at least one geth on its own.”

“I think that might actually be why it worked. A single geth runtime, at least before the war, wasn’t advanced enough to respond to an asari meld initiation. Their intelligence came from their network. Imagine thousands and thousands of voices, all attempting to talk to you at once. It would burn clean through you.”

“I don’t think I have to imagine, actually,” Shepard cringed, the memory of the geth network attack on Eden Prime surging to the front of her mind.

“That’s right… Forgive me, commander. Sometimes I forget we’re not still running triage.”

“You’ve still got it, doc,” Shepard chuckled. “Do you know, I was almost nervous about having organics on the crew before I remembered you’re still in charge of the med bay?”

“It has been a long time since I put any of my organic medical training to good use, but when all is said and done, it’s what I am meant to do.”

Shepard laughed again, a little less sincerely. “We’re first editions. It’s what we’re all meant to do.”

“No, Shepard,” Dr. Chakwas closed the medicine cabinet with a click and looked pointedly at her, “it’s what we were _built_ to do, just like organics are built to make sure their genes survive for another generation. Call me sentimental, but I don’t think you aren’t living up to your potential just because you’re not a full-time paramedic, anymore.”

Shepard couldn’t help but smile. Even during the worst of the plague years, Dr. Chakwas somehow knew how to bring her out of her negative feedback loops.

“Can I talk with Dr. T’Soni, or do you think it’s better if she gets some rest?”

“Go right ahead. I don’t think she’s in any mood to sleep, right now.” She gave Shepard a knowing smile. “If anything, she seems a bit embarrassed.”

\--

Sure enough, Liara was sitting at one of the desks in the back room with her head resting in one hand. She looked unhappy, but Shepard couldn’t tell whether it was out of physical pain or just annoyance.

“How are you feeling, Dr. T’Soni?”

The asari jumped a bit before rising from her seat. “It’s Liara, please. I am alright, now, though I must admit that I feel incredibly foolish.”

“How so?”

“I was blinded by the idea of seeing a genuine Prothean beacon message, and because of that I put both my safety and yours at risk. I’m sorry, Shepard.”

“It’s alright, Liara.” Shepard couldn’t help but smile. The frantic excitement had all dissolved from Liara’s voice, and now she sounded, in a word, deflated. Overclocking yourself and then immediately regretting it seemed like a hobby to organics, sometimes. “Though I think you should know I turned off a couple of defense programs so they wouldn’t hurt you. I’m not sure _how_ they would hurt you, but it seemed like a good idea.”

“Really?” That seemed to help, at least a little. Her eyes were more focused now, and Shepard could swear there was a slightly higher concentration of purple pigmentation near her fringe. She did a quick realignment of her color sensors just to make sure. Nope, definitely purple. “I…thank you, Shepard. It means a lot to me that you would trust me that much.”

Thirteen audiovisual analysis programs ran over that sentence in the back of Shepard’s mind while what little processing ability she had left tried to think of what to say next. It took her longer than expected.

“…I should go.”

Liara nodded, looking away from her. “Thank you for coming to see me, Shepard.”

\--

>>Shepard?

>>Shepard, seriously? You ping me and then don’t say anything?

>>…you okay?

>I’m fine, Joker.

>>Oh thank god. Okay, so did you seriously just meld with an asari? Like, did that actually _happen_?

>Yeah, it happened.

>>Holy shit.

>I know.

>>So, what was it like?

>Weird.

>>Wow, I’m shocked. Any further insight, or is that what you’re gonna put on your report to Anderson?

>None of this is going in my report to Anderson. Not the official one, anyway.  I still haven’t completely figured out what to make of it.

>>Why not?

>It was just so _strange_. It was like being hooked up to someone else’s system, except they were completely fused with you, and nothing on their end of the connection made any sense. It was all rough and invasive. Remember when they first came up with the Genesis program, and there was no precision to the code combination?

>>The Code Blender, yeah.

>Right. The code combination method tried to process everything at once. _That’s_ what that felt like. It was like a root-access connection with absolutely no control over which data gets exchanged. And then when it cut off, everything just snaps back to its original position like a magnet.

>>Whoa.

>Yeah. I’m surprised it didn’t kill us both.

>>So, I take it Liara’s okay? She seemed kinda shell-shocked.

>She’s alright. Dr. Chakwas gave her some asari aspirin.

>>Good.

>>...so is it really that dangerous? Or can we let this information out past the Normandy?

>Dr. Chakwas doesn’t think it would hurt if she tried it again, no. …and I haven’t decided whether the rest of the galaxy needs to know this just yet.

>>Do you think you’d have an answer by the time we get to Feros? Because I dunno if you’ve dropped into the ship’s network yet, but people are going _nuts_.

>I’ve been keeping out of it for a reason. Mostly, I’m just trying to figure out how much political bullshit this would stir up if word got out.

>>As much as I hate to say this, we’d probably get a lot less of a reaction if it came straight from the human networks than if say, a turian or asari crew member were to tell somebody. I mean hell, they gave the news about the beacon about as much credit as a bunch of krogan bragging about their kill counts.

>Unfortunately, you make a good point. I’m dropping the order now, so it’ll hit the main network once we get to Feros. I’m sure Al-Jilani will have something to say about it, but nobody else reports on human colonies unless they get attacked.

>>Yeah, not to mention Al-Jilani covering something guarantees nobody else will touch it.  

>Alright, I’m gonna finish these armor requisitions before we hit the relay. Talk to you later.

>>See you, commander.

\--

Sure enough, after the ordeal with the Thorian (which went pretty high on the list of Most Disgusting Things Shepard Has Ever Witnessed), despite the fact that she experienced another successful neural link with Shiala, she didn’t hear anything about it while talking with the Council in the comm room. They seemed a good deal more concerned with the fact that the Thorian was able to spontaneously clone asari. The human replicas were…a little less true to life, but they were at least shaped correctly. Between that and the apparent mind control capabilities, Shepard couldn’t blame them for focusing on the issues that affected them more directly. She was starting to suspect that the turian councilor was deliberately trying to piss her off, though.

Sadly, the fact that humans and asari were capable of melding turned into more of an exciting rumor than an actual news story. Al-Jilani had something to say about it, namely that it was bad for reasons she didn’t really take time to explain, but none of the other major news networks paid much attention to it. Shepard wasn’t surprised; Emily Wong was, at present, the only human reporter working for a mainstream galactic news network, and she couldn’t afford to run too many human-centric stories without risking her position.

So as they made their way to Noveria, Shepard found herself down in the cargo bay, sitting on a crate between Ashley and Garrus, getting her equipment ready for whatever they ran into next.

“I won’t lie to you, Shepard,” Garrus dug a bit of plant matter out of the casing of his gun. “That Thorian was one of the creepiest things I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been witness to a Hanar rave gone horribly wrong.”

“There’s a mental image,” Ashley chuckled. “I think I have to agree, though. The husks were creepy, but they were a lot less…squelchy.”

“Ha!” Wrex grinned at them from where he was leaning against the wall. “A bunch of squishy humans running at you all at once? That actually sounds like _fun_.”

“Sorry you had to miss out on the toxic, corrosive creeper vomit,” Shepard rolled her eyes at him. “I’ll be sure to bring you along next time we find a squid-plant that controls minds.”

“Look forward to it.” 

“Actually skipper, I’ve been thinking about that,” Ashley set her gun down and turned to face Shepard more directly. “How did the Thorian’s mind control work on organics _and_ synthetics? Even that salarian weapons dealer was shooting at us.”

“I don’t know,” Shepard applied another coat of omni-gel to her shoulder guards. “Maybe that’s what ExoGeni was trying to study. Twisted as the methods were, understanding how the Thorian affected humans could be a huge breakthrough in the study of organic and synthetic life.”

“As it stands, it definitely raises a hell of a lot more questions than it answers,” Garrus added. “…do you know, I sometimes forget that humans aren’t organic? Maybe it’s just because the only other standard for synthetic life we have is the geth, but I’ve caught myself wondering why I never see you in the mess hall at breakfast.”

“You can thank the organic humans for that,” Shepard replied. “They did everything they could to make us just like them. They made sure we looked like them, moved like them, talked like them, everything.”

“That sounds like it would take an awfully long time.”

“It did, and it wasn’t perfect, especially in the beginning. A lot of the first editions didn’t live for too long; the initial method for encoding distinct personality and intelligence meant the data couldn’t be transferred from one drive to another. You were stuck in whatever casing they gave you with no room for upgrades.”

“Yeah, that’s why Joker almost never leaves the ship,” Ashley said. “A whole bunch of his programming is housed on the Normandy’s drives. He’s gotten several offers from Alliance command to power him down for a few hours and put him in a completely mobile platform, but he says he doesn’t want to risk it.”

“That…explains a lot,” Garrus chuckled. “But weren’t organic humans in the middle of a global pandemic by the time they developed true AI? I mean, it’s probably none of my business, but it doesn’t seem very practical to devote that much time and resources to anything other than treating the disease.”

“The organic plague was the whole reason we were created.” Shepard deliberately kept her voice low, so she wouldn’t shout. “We were the only way to treat the disease without spreading it. Hospital staff started contracting it before new ones could be hired in their place, so they made VI platforms to administer medication. The quicker the disease spread, the quicker the organics developed new forms of synthetic intelligence, until they made us.”

It wasn’t Garrus’s fault that he didn’t understand what the organic plague was like; most humans didn’t understand what it was like, not really. There were only a few thousand first and second editions who remembered it. Only a few thousand of them ever saw the faces of their creators while they were alive. 

She hadn’t realized she had her optics unfocused until Garrus spoke, again.

“I’m sorry, Shepard. That was insensitive of me.”

“It was a long time ago.” Shepard left it at that, as though the passage of time meant anything when you were built to last forever.

\--

The Mako was Shepard’s favorite way of getting around a planet, by far. It had the best gun on the ship after the Normandy’s cannons, it could climb straight up a cliff without too much trouble, and she even managed to wiggle it between those rock formations on Therum to take out another three waves of geth.

Now that she had two of her newly recruited organic squad mates in the vehicle with her, she was beginning to wonder if there might be a downside to a vehicle designed and constructed entirely by synthetic humans.

“Shepard, are you sure this is safe?” Liara had pressed herself against the back of her seat and sounded even more nervous than she had while trapped in a Prothean force field. “We’re going awfully fast for such icy conditions.”

“The Mako can stick to anything,” Shepard shrugged. “As long as we don’t drive into any lava, we’ll be fine.”

“Or off the side of the mountain!” This wasn’t Tali’s first ride in the Mako, so she seemed to have made the transition from nervous to plain terrified. “Keelah, I thought Garrus was kidding when he said you were hanging off that skybridge by the back tires!”

“Hey, that was for less than a full second! We got all six wheels back on the ground with no problem.”

“I’d very much like it if we could get all of them on level ground right now.” Liara bit her knuckle and screwed her eyes shut, apparently in an effort to fight off queasiness. “I don’t see how driving with half our tires on the wall does us any good.”

“Tactical advantage,” Shepard swung them into a sharp turn and aimed the heavy cannon at the geth camped out at the other end of the tunnel. “We’re pretty sure the geth targeting algorithms follow the nose of the Mako, so the quicker we can turn it, the quicker they miss.”

As if to demonstrate her point, Shepard turned them back around quickly enough for Tali to fall halfway into Liara’s lap. Sure enough, the geth rockets hit the wall where the Mako’s nose had been facing just seconds before. One more shot of the heavy cannon, and the geth troopers went flying out of their way as they barreled down the mountain path toward Peak 15. Behind her, Shepard could hear Liara whispering to Tali, probably not something meant for her ears.

“Was it this bad on Nodacrux?”  

“No. Nodacrux was much, much worse.”

\--

Matriarch Benezia was a stunning individual. Publically available pictures of her on the extranet showed a brilliant woman with Liara’s strong eyes and soft smile. Very little information regarding her work with Saren was widely distributed – the world would remember her as herself, before the sickness of Sovereign had infected her mind.

Still, Shepard went to talk to Liara first. There was no way Liara hadn’t been affected by the fact that they had just killed her mother. She found her in the med bay, working at her terminal, seeming very calm, considering the circumstances. She began to stand up, but Shepard chose instead to take a seat beside her.

“Hello, Shepard.”

“Are you alright, Liara?”

“Yes, Shepard. I know it must seem strange, but as I had not seen my mother in many years, I choose to remember her as she was when I knew her – I imagine most of the galaxy will agree with me. I do hope you will spare her memory the indignity of Saren’s influence.”

“Absolutely,” Shepard, despite herself, began looking for signs of emotional response in Liara’s eyes, her voice, even in her posture. She didn’t find anything notable, and that didn’t make any sense to her. She wanted to understand, but she didn’t have enough information.

Meanwhile, Liara was still watching her.

“Shepard,” she began, “I mean no dishonor to my mother. She loved me very, very much, and I don’t believe for a moment that anything could have changed that. Asari culture takes a rather philosophical approach to life and death. If we didn’t, it would be much harder to take bondmates of other species.”

“That makes sense,” Shepard considered this for a moment. “I wish I could have met your mother under better circumstances.”

“As do I. She was a remarkable woman. I…well.” Liara looked away from her.

“What is it?”

“I could try to show you.”

…oh. Silence hung between them for a moment while Shepard considered what would happen if this hurt her. She decided, in the end, that she needed to give Liara more credit than that.

“I’d like that.”

Liara’s whole expression brightened. She sat up a bit straighter and exhaled slowly. Shepard had her firewalls down, her system open and vulnerable, in less time than it took her to blink.

Liara didn’t give her any kind of signal this time. Instead, she felt the wave of information flow into her systems like an ocean wave. She was slightly better prepared for it this time, so when her focus was drawn to a particular cluster of memory, cloudy in some places but very sharp in others, she understood what it meant.

She recognized the face of Matriarch Benezia, though a bit younger and much brighter under the Thessia sun. She wore a yellow dress that felt soft under small fingers. Her heart beat steadily, muffled by cloth and skin beneath a tired little head leaning gently against her. Her hand was soft, her lips softer against a warm forehead. She looked down with love at her daughter, as though she were holding the most precious treasure in the universe in her arms.

The drop wasn’t quite so sharp this time, but Liara still fell back in her chair, a bit. She brought a hand to her head, her breathing slow and deep. Shepard thought she could see her eyes water just a bit, but she couldn’t be sure. She tried to think of something to say, but failing at any kind of eloquence, ended up saying the first thing that came to mind.

“Thank you.”

“Thank _you_ , Shepard,” Liara blinked a few times before finally looking at her. “I’ve never shared that memory with anyone else, before. It was good to remember her, again.”

Something about these words coupled with the soft smile on Liara’s face hit Shepard right in her gold-and-silicone heart. Never once had she shared such a complete understanding with an organic – or with anyone, for that matter. It was exhilarating. It was terrifying. Her emotional processes got caught between these two facts, completely unsure of what to do about it.

The decision was made for her when Liara brought a hand to her forehead again and let out a heavy sigh.

“I believe I need to rest, now.”

“Are you feeling alright?”

“I’m feeling better than I have in a long time, Shepard,” to her surprise, Liara reached out and took her hand. Shepard could feel the strength of her bones beneath the softness of her skin, the warmth of life not dissimilar from her own. “Thank you.”

“Get some rest,” Shepard smiled, despite the fact that fear was starting to win the battle over joy. “I’ll talk to you later.” 

\--

Shepard didn’t quite know what to do with herself, afterwards. She felt nervous, jumpy almost. She spent a good deal of time considering Liara’s philosophy, focusing on the happiness of the past over the ugly reality of the present. She began to wonder if the idea was a teachable one, if she could somehow learn to decouple sad memories from happy ones.

For the first time in her life, she was envious of an organic.

That was how she wound up back down in the cargo hold just as the Normandy was starting to shift into its night cycle. To her surprise, she found Tali and Kaidan sitting by Garrus on the impromptu cargo-mountain by Ashley’s workstation. It had grown significantly since Feros, and it now looked like it could even fit Wrex if they added another couple of ammunition cases.

She took a seat on her usual crate, unsure of what she wanted to say, or why she was even here. Her armor didn’t need any touching up, and she didn’t feel like installing the new gun mods she’d gotten on the Citadel. She settled for watching the clock tick by, until the hour struck 21:00 and the main lights dimmed by thirty percent.

“Do you ever wonder why we keep day and night the same on our ships as it is on earth?” She asked. She didn’t really know who she was asking, but she let the question hang, anyway.

“Can’t say I’ve thought too hard about it, ma’am,” Ashley didn’t turn away from her workstation, but Shepard was pretty sure she could see the beginnings of a smile on the side of her mouth.

“Wait,” Tali looked up from the disassembled shotgun in front of her. “You keep the day and night cycles even without organics on your crew?”

“Sure do,” Kaidan nodded. “It’s been standard practice since we started building our interstellar navy.”

“ _That’s_ interesting. I assumed it was one of those things that you only kept going for our benefit,” Garrus said, “like the rations in the mess hall.”

“From a purely technical standpoint, it makes no sense,” Shepard continued. “Our sleep cycles are only a few hours, and we all have internal clocks. I don’t think that means we should stop doing it, but it makes me wonder.”

“Getting philosophical on us, skipper?” Ashley was facing them, now, idly polishing the body of her assault rifle.

“Dr. Chakwas warned me about this, but I never thought I’d ever actually see it.” Kaidan chuckled.

“See what?”

The elevator door slid open behind them all, and Liara stepped out onto the deck, Wrex following close behind. From the smell of it, Wrex had finished one of his evening snacks. Either way, it was good to see Liara, again.

“Hey Liara,” Tali waved them over. “Shepard was about to start pondering the meaning of life, is all. Want to watch?”

“Take a seat,” Kaidan shifted over and gently patted the spot beside him. “It’s not too often I see you outside of the med bay.”

“Yes, well,” Liara sat down next to him, but didn’t meet his eyes. “It _was_ getting a bit lonely.”

“Alright, move your seed-shooters over,” Wrex hauled his shotgun case out of his locker and dropped it down beside Garrus. “Make room for a _real_ gun.”

“Please,” the sound of Tali snorting derisively was very strange to hear through her filters. “That’s not a gun; that’s a rock thrower with a handle.”

“ _Ha_! Says the girl with the frilly little precision mods on hers.”

“The frilly precision mods that saved your _life_ when those geth hoppers showed up.”

“Anyway,” Garrus rolled his eyes, but he was grinning, “what was that about the meaning of life, Shepard?”

“Um,” it took Shepard a good few seconds to bring that train of thought back up from the background, buried as it was by a comparison of wide-range shotguns vs. modified precision shotguns. “It’s not really that important, I guess. Sometimes I just get to thinking about how humans aren’t very good at doing what we’re made to do.”

“What do you mean by that?” Wrex asked.

“We were made to keep the organics alive,” Shepard explained. “At least, the first and second editions were. Once that wasn’t…possible, we started figuring out ways to carry on the civilization. Then we started the interstellar fleet, started making people with a purpose – like Joker was made to pilot the Normandy.”

“That isn’t the case anymore, is it?” Liara leaned forward, resting her arms on her knees. “By the time humans started expanding their reach in interstellar space, their reproduction methods had changed significantly.”

“It did, yeah. We built the Genesis program, started reproducing by copying code and then combining it with someone else’s,” she shook her head. “But ever since then, we’ve kept all those old organic habits that made us more relatable to our patients, even if they don’t make any sense. It’s like we’re trying to convince the rest of the galaxy we’re really organics.”

“If that’s your endgame, you’re doing a pretty good job of it,” Wrex shrugged.

“Doesn’t seem that way,” Shepard shook her head. “Before we started this mission to take down Saren, I was starting to feel almost purposeless. Maybe I’m just thinking too hard about it.”

“You’re _definitely_ thinking too hard about it, commander.” Joker’s voice sounded over the intercom speaker above them.

“Listening in on my conversations, Joker?”

“No, of _course_ not.” 

“Joker, if you want in on the conversation so badly, get down here!” Kaidan looked up at the ceiling and narrowed his eyes at it. Shepard heard Liara laugh softly, and she couldn’t help but do the same. There was no response, so either Joker was on his way or he didn’t care enough to reply.

“Shepard,” Ashley set her gun down and took a seat on the floor, “remember the geth we found on Feros? The ones we caught in the middle of praying?”

“I do, yeah,” Shepard nodded. “It’s kind of hard to forget. The glare from their lamp things nearly blinded me, and besides which it’s the last thing I expected to see inside the geth complex.”

“Exactly. It doesn’t make sense at first, to think that a synthetic might seek guidance from a higher power. I remember when I first told Garrus I believed in god, his visor nearly fell off.”

“It did come as a bit of a surprise,” Garrus nodded, “but I don’t see anything wrong with it.”

“That’s my point,” Ashley made a sweeping gesture to indicate the circle they were now seated in. “We don’t have to follow the programming we were given exactly. It’s awful that the organic plague ended with their extinction, but because it’s over, we have the freedom to decide what our purpose is.”

“The geth have been isolated behind the Veil for hundreds of years, now,” Tali chimed in. “The quarians built them to be servants of the people. That’s what the word ‘geth’ means. Until the Morning War, none of them were even programmed to know how to use a gun. Seeing what they’ve become, now…it’s staggering to think about. It’s not a very happy example, but it follows Ashley’s line of thinking.”

“Yes, it does.” Shepard traveled deep into her root storage drives and examined the most basic rules of her programming. When the organic plague ended, she had found herself unable to let go of her motivation processes relating to her function as a paramedic. At her core, she still wanted to get the sick and wounded to safety, still wanted to do her best to eliminate threats to organic life, still wanted to make the world safe for organics to live in.

It was possible that these rules needed revision, but she was hesitant to alter them herself.

“You gonna be okay, Shepard?” Kaidan’s voice brought her back to the outside world.

“I think I’ll be alright,” Shepard shook her head and gave him a wry smile. “This is why I keep you guys around; I’d go nuts without someone to pull me out of a stuck cycle.”

“Always glad to be of service,” Kaidan returned his attention to his helmet for a moment, but then looked back up at her. “Dr. Chakwas told me about your old job back on Earth.”

“What’d she say? Nothing too bad, I hope.”

“Nothing bad, at all. She said you were the best paramedic she’d ever seen.”

“Really?” That hit Shepard right in the core. Dr. Chakwas had never made it any kind of secret that she thought Shepard was a _good_ paramedic, but she’d never gone that far, either. “That’s awfully kind of her. She’s not bad, herself. Did a hell of a job down there in London.”

While there was a job to do, anyway.

“Wait,” Ashley looked between the two of them. “Shepard, are you a first gen?”

“I’m used to ‘first edition’, but yeah,” Shepard nodded. “It’s not like I try to keep it a secret.”

“When people talk about your history, they mostly talk about Akuze,” Kaidan said. “I’d never heard about your work during the plague years until she told me.”

Shepard could hear the apology in his voice, though he didn’t have anything to apologize for. Not really.

“If you don’t mind my asking,” Liara’s voice was soft, like she wasn’t sure if she should be part of the conversation, “how…old are you?”

“My manufacture date is 2128. I’ve been around for 55 years.”

“How long were you a paramedic?” Tali asked. Everyone seemed to have set their weapons and gear down and were listening intently.

“Until 2154,” Shepard looked down toward the floor. “The last twenty organic patients were transported to our hospital, and by the end of the year…well, there wasn’t much of a need for paramedics. They had a need for people to serve on the interstellar navy, though. Since we didn’t need organic life support, we could travel faster and farther than organics ever did. And well, then we ran into the Turians.”

“You certainly did,” Garrus chuckled. “I used to work with a guy at C-Sec who was on the patrol ship by Relay 314. He said if your scanners hadn’t seen them and you’d tried to activate the relay, humans might have joined the galactic community by starting a war.”

“I’m sort of surprised we didn’t,” Kaidan chuckled. “Before we found the Mars archives and the mass relays, there were still some humans who didn’t believe alien life even existed.”

 “Glad that’s not the case,” Shepard chuckled. “The galaxy would be a whole lot more boring if it were.”

“Not to mention none of us would be here right now,” Liara looked from one side of their circle to the other, the hesitance in her gaze replaced with what looked like contentment, “and I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be.”

“Yeah,” Wrex laughed softly, “the food could use some improvement, but as far as alien ships go, this one isn’t half bad.”

“Glad to know we’re up to your standards, Wrex,” Ashley smirked at him.

 Wrex laughed more loudly this time, the deep rumble of it echoing all the way to the floor.

\--

It was strange to hear Ashley’s voice over a different comm channel than their standard link. Shepard had no doubt that there was no one better for the job of helping lead Kirrahe’s team, but that didn’t mean she had to like the fact that the closer they got, the greater the signal was distorted, no matter how many comm towers or fuel tanks or geth they destroyed.

When they reached the facility and hacked their way into the lower sections of the lab, a small loop of caution signals flared up in the back of Shepard’s mind. It had no identifiable source other than the mission at hand, but it persisted. Something wasn’t right, here.

The indoctrinated salarians were pitiful, but she gave them the chance to run for it. She couldn’t make them leave if they didn’t know they needed to, but at the very least, she could give them the chance to live. Wrex disagreed with her – he didn’t think it was worth risking them turning hostile like the last one had – but conceded it wasn’t his choice to make. If they made it out of this alive, she was taking Wrex out for a drink. Shit, she was taking _everyone_ out for a drink. Maybe this would finally get her to try one of those intoxication programs being traded around the Citadel.

She thought that maybe the anxiety (because there wasn’t much else she could _call_ it) might be replaced by genuine fear when she found Sovereign’s beacon – or dissipate now that she had a clearer understanding of just how great the threat here was, or _something_ , but it kept nagging at her, disrupting her concentration even when they were finally reaching the breeding facility where Kaidan was bringing in the bomb. It finally occurred to her that this was the first time since Akuze that her team had been split up like this.

This was _not_ Akuze.

She kept reminding herself of this fact when the geth swarmed on Ashley’s team, when she ran back towards her only to hear that Kaidan’s side was taking fire.

She locked up. She shut down every single non-vital process except for the decision at hand. Her skin felt hot at the base of her neck as the fear still clung to her, heating up her processors with redundant calculations. She could barely put together enough memory to decide at all, her whole brain flipping between Ashley and Kaidan so quickly, she knew that if she didn’t make a decision soon, it wouldn’t matter, because they would all be dead.

They needed to make _sure_ that bomb went off.

That, in the end, was the deciding factor.

When she made her way into the cargo hold and saw Ashley’s workstation empty, she found herself wishing she was just one model behind, one year older, created before there was a reliable way to engineer synthetic tear ducts.

Back in her cabin, Shepard sank back down to the root of her programming structure, opened up the basic tenets of her motivation. She couldn’t directly rewrite the codes that kept her alive and aware– the organics had put in a failsafe to prevent synthetics from accidentally killing themselves – but her morality, her judgment, and her motivation were hers to control.

She didn’t change much. Just a few key modifiers in the code: she wanted to get the sick and wounded to safety, she wanted to do her best to eliminate threats to _all_ life, she wanted to make the galaxy a safe place for sentient life, and most importantly, once she was done, she wanted to do everything in her power to _keep_ it that way.

She couldn’t save everyone, but she could damn well try.

\--

It took a _lot_ of self control not to throw Udina straight off the Presidium tower, but she managed it. Back on the Normandy, she fumed for a while in her cabin before deciding to see if there was anything in her weapons locker she’d forgotten about that might help them crack the security around the ship long enough to get out of the Citadel docks. Probably not, but she was going insane pacing around her room.

She was just distracted enough to trip and fall on the goddamn floor, as though this day hadn’t gone badly enough already. To her surprise, Liara was there to help her up. She didn’t let go of her hand once they were both standing, and Shepard found that she didn’t want her to. Then, Liara moved closer, so promisingly near to her that Shepard barely believed her own eyes –

And then Joker had to interrupt them. Jackass was probably watching. Okay, he was _definitely_ watching, but his sense of timing was what really got to her.

Anderson, god bless him, was waiting for them at Flux with a plan. Shepard could’ve hugged him then and there, but that probably would’ve tipped off somebody in C-Sec. There would be time for hugs once this mess was over.

When they’d successfully stolen the Normandy from Alliance custody, Anderson managed to send her the visual memory of him clocking Udina upside the head. That made her day, not to mention Joker’s.

\--

On the way to Ilos, the door to her cabin slid open, and she looked up to see Liara standing in front of her, looking equal parts nervous and excited. Shepard’s vital sign monitors couldn’t help but pick up an uptick in her heart rate when they made eye contact.

She felt the circuits at the base of her neck start to heat up again, that agitating anxiety runtime threatening to consume any processing ability it could get near. She could feel a multitude of protocols start up that she hadn’t felt in years. Organic humans might not have had their priorities entirely in order; they had developed synthetic bodies fully functional and responsive sexual mechanisms before they finished the software that enabled synthetics to perform simple surgery. Shepard was starting to wonder if she hadn’t given them enough credit, before now.

“Liara.”

“Shepard,” Liara took a halting step towards her. “I wanted to see you before we landed. I’ve been thinking about what might happen when this is over, and it struck me that this might be the last chance I have to speak with you alone, before…”

“I understand,” Shepard stood, met her halfway.

“When I first met you, I was confused as to whether my interest in you was academic or…more personal,” she glanced away from her for a moment. “I believe in the beginning it was at least partly an attraction to the potential for new discovery that you represented.”

“Oh?” Shepard raised a playful eyebrow at her. “What about now?”

“Well, there’s still plenty of potential,” Liara smiled, “but I’d like to think we have something more than that.”

“I like that idea,” Shepard put a hand on her shoulder, slowly sliding it up towards her neck. “I like it a lot.”

Before she could talk herself out of it, she pulled Liara into a kiss, savoring both the hot-sweet taste of her mouth and the rush of positive feedback that cascaded up her circuits. Liara wrapped one arm around her waist and went straight for the hem of her shirt, and Shepard was more than happy to break off for a moment and toss it aside.

They made their way to Shepard’s bed slowly, pausing to discard clothing and to lay worshipful hands and kisses on the expanses of skin they uncovered. Liara turned them over and lay on top of her, cradling her face in her hands and kissing her sweetly.

“You’re so beautiful.”

The words were barely a whisper, but Shepard heard them clear as day. She opened her eyes, her reply lost when she saw the way Liara was looking at her, like she was some wonderful gift from the cosmos instead of the last resort of a dying species.

She could feel Liara at the corners of her mind, asking permission. She granted her entry without a second thought.

Burning joy consumed her whole being for a small moment, before the meld balanced and left them a hybrid whole. She felt the heat and pressure of her own hands on Liara’s waist, felt the raw, unstructured depth of Liara’s emotion blend into her programming. She pressed a kiss to the side of her neck and felt the heat in ways that couldn’t be measured by thermal sensors. Liara wound a hand into her hair, and she felt both the pull at her scalp and the softness between her fingers.

She felt _alive_.

Liara’s hands were skilled and sure, sliding down over Shepard’s stomach until she found what she was looking for. Shepard felt two of her fingers press down and make the smallest of circles on her clit, a catalyst that sent a chain reaction of pleasure glowing its way up her body. She wanted badly to give something back, to make Liara feel just as wonderfully out of control as she did now, but she couldn’t focus on anything else.

Liara kissed her cheek just once, and then slowly made her way down the bed until she could replace her fingers with her mouth, laving the underside of Shepard’s clit with her tongue. Her fingers found another job, slipped inside of her and pressing upwards at her inner walls.

Shepard gave a shout, trying at the last minute not to grip too hard as she grabbed hold of Liara’s crest. Inside of the meld, Liara still felt everything she was doing to her, and she became vaguely aware that she could taste herself in Liara’s mouth, like silicone mixed with hot metal.

 Liara looked up at her with eyes as dark as space itself, her voice echoing in Shepard’s mind.

_Let go_.

Shepard felt her back twist upwards and _screamed_ as her whole system was shot through with euphoria. To her surprise, she felt Liara’s voice against her skin, and glanced down to see her shuddering, her hand grasping at the mattress. Shepard took it in her own, as though she needed any other reminder of their connection. Liara pulled herself back up to face her, smiling contentedly.

_Does that always happen?_ Shepard asked. It wasn’t so hard; it felt like sending a network message, but more direct.

_Only if you’re doing it right_. Liara kissed her again, a warm flush of affection blooming in both of their minds.

\--

Shepard wondered what Prothean sounded like to someone who couldn’t understand it. If they managed to take out Saren…she still might never get the chance to find out, since she took Liara and Tali with her onto Ilos. Well, there were more pressing matters to deal with at the moment.

They made their way back to the Mako without too much trouble – between Tali and Shepard, they could hack their way through just about anything, so taking out the geth on the way down was no trouble at all. Driving the Mako through such a narrow tunnel probably would have been more trouble if it hadn’t been a straight shot the whole way down, but things seemed to finally be going their way until Shepard nearly drove them straight up an invisible wall.

“Okay, what the _hell_.”

“Um,” Tali pointed to the Mako’s visual feed, “there’s a force field.”

“Seriously? Then why can I not see it?”

“The discoloration is very subtle,” Liara tilted her head a bit.

“If I survive this, I’m getting a new set of eyes,” Shepard grumbled as she put the Mako in reverse.

\--

One of the last major software changes put in place was that synthetics were instructed to watch for warning signs of organics about to attempt suicide. Upon seeing them, they were meant to intervene. It became unfortunately common, towards the end, when a lot of people decided they’d rather die on their own terms than let their bodies shut down one system at a time.

The problem was, the synthetics that had already been alive and functioning for years sometimes didn’t necessarily accept the software changes. Once it became necessary for synthetics to think for themselves, any changes to their programming could be recognized as an external influence and disregarded. 

When it became apparent that there was no cure in sight, Shepard didn’t stop infected organics from ending their own misery. She didn’t see why she should treat Saren any differently.

When the synthetic components of his body started moving again, morphed into some puppet under the Reapers’ control, Shepard couldn’t reach for her gun quickly enough. Even after the geth, the husks, the Thorian, the indoctrinated humans, and a whole nightmare’s worth of thresher maws, this was the scariest thing she had ever seen. The idea that the Reapers could control them even after death, _this_ was enough to burn a whole new protocol into her hardware.

She would never stop, never lay down her gun and call the job done, until the Reapers were gone.

Maybe it was this steely determination that gave her the edge. Maybe it was hearing over the comm that the Destiny Ascension had been saved. Maybe it was the new scope she’d put on her rifle before they’d landed on Ilos. Maybe she was just lucky. All she knew was that every single shot she fired at Saren, no matter how quickly he jumped from wall to wall, hit home. In a matter of minutes that passed in a blink, Saren was dead, and Sovereign died with him.

Of course, half of the ship’s body came crashing down over them, as though Sovereign couldn’t let go without one final insult against them. The edge of the metal plating landed right on the side of Shepard’s right arm, pulling her armor, skin, and part of the grey-white muscle clean off. It hurt like a bitch, even after Shepard shut off the pain response in that area, but as she climbed out of the wreckage and met the rescue team sent after them, she realized what a sight it made.

Her arm was stripped down to the skeleton, her bones a composite of metal and mineral, her neurons metallic wires that enmeshed every part of her. Her skin was torn, but did not bleed; her face was weary, but showed no pain. Here was Commander Shepard, the woman who helped take out Saren and the Reaper he brought with him, the woman who had fought against the destruction of organic life, standing undeniably synthetic and daring the galaxy to fault her for it.

\--

Naturally, someone managed to get a photo of her standing in the wreckage of the Presidium, and the news networks went berserk before the rebuilding effort was even finished. Shepard pinged Emily and asked if she’d like an interview – she was only doing one, so she might as well talk to someone she could trust.

Even after all humanity had done, Shepard was still surprised when they asked for her opinion on electing a human Council member. She nominated Udina, mostly because she knew Anderson would hate it more than anything, and partly because she couldn’t think of anyone else who would get on the Council’s nerves more. Kaidan called her motivation “a little petty”, but it wasn’t like any of them expected the Council to go through with it.

As soon as she could find the time, she went to talk to Dr. Chakwas about her eyesight. Her arm had been easy enough to fix, but her color receptors were still washing out down by the drive core. To her surprise, Dr. Chakwas had an answer for her before she even examined her eyes.

“As much as I hate this particular turn of phrase, that’s not a bug. It’s a feature.” 

Shepard’s eyes narrowed in disbelief. “… _what?_ ”

“I remember when they first started making paramedics.” She looked wistfully at the notes on her datapad. “The organics designed you with eyes that were more perceptive to low light, but not necessarily to color. It was supposed to help you locate patients in disaster sites – that god-awful earthquake in the States had just happened, so everyone was very concerned about that.”

“So, is there a way to fix it? Give me standard eyesight just like everyone else?”

“It would be very easy to replace your current optics with the standard models, yes.”

“So, can you do it _right now_?”

“Absolutely,” Dr. Chakwas opened up a cabinet and sorted through a few drawers before finding the part she needed. “To be honest, I’ve been waiting for you to ask me about this for a good few years. I decided it should be your decision, so I didn’t bring it up.”

“Why not?”

“To put it simply,” she pulled her chair up to where Shepard sat on one of the beds, “I was waiting for you to realize you were still seeing the world through eyes meant for someone else.”

“How poetic,” Shepard shook her head. “Alright, let’s get this done. Just—don’t change the color. I think Liara likes them this way.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, commander.”


End file.
